From cleaning up parking lots to a large amount of paper use, Camas High School (CHS) has a strong environmental impact in many ways, some positive and some negative. CHS staff and students discuss these various impacts and efforts.
One of the courses offered at CHS is AP Environmental Science, where students have reported learning about how to personally better their carbon footprint. This lesson allowed students to identify the areas in which they were harming the environment and allowed them to make a change.
“I have been taking public transit as much as possible ever since I learned about my carbon footprint,” Markus Ruddy, CHS sophomore and former AP Environmental Science student, said.
This class also allows students to have hands-on experience with the environment through a garden activity.
“I feel like it taught me how delicate all these plants in the world actually are and how much it actually takes to care for them,” Ruddy said.
Through this class, students were able to learn the direct impacts of human actions on the environment and how the path to a solution could be paved.
Another opportunity for students to learn about the environment and participate in projects to strengthen it is the Green Team at CHS. The Green Team is a club that focuses on small projects that can make a big difference in our local environment.
“We’ve had a lot of different initiatives, such as saving electricity, and we got trash cans put in the student parking lot in 2016,” Ali Coker, CHS Green Team advisor, said. “ We’re just trying to improve the community and the school.”
In addition to adding trash cans in the parking lot, Green Team has put in an effort to clean up the CHS parking lots.
“We’ve collected over 40 pounds of trash from the parking lot this month,” Coker said. “This helps in a sense because we’re at the top of a hill and all our runoff goes to Lacamas Lake.”
The Green Team has also made attempts to reduce the electricity use at our school.
“Around 2 years ago, we asked on certain days that teachers keep their lights off as much as possible,” Coker said.
Overall, CHS offers many opportunities for students to learn about the environment with the hopes of expanding an environmentally educated generation. Despite these positives, CHS is not always perfect in ensuring the use of environmentally beneficial practices.
“We are a paper-hungry school,” Beth Filion, CHS administrative assistant, said.
During the 2025-26 school year alone, CHS has used approximately 1.27 million pieces of white paper so far, with more expected to finish out the school year. This number was provided by Filion, the coordinator for printing and ordering paper at CHS. This means that CHS has already planted over 150 trees to use this year.
While some teachers have made attempts to move more assignments to a digital format, paper is still a huge resource at CHS.
CHS students also feel passionate about strengthening the environment at our school.
“I always make sure to pick up after myself at lunch because that is where I end up seeing the most trash,” Kailey Radston, CHS senior, said.
“I try to just observe what I believe is causing harm to the environment and do those little acts to help,” Jenna Al-Salti, CHS senior, said.
It is not an easy task for CHS to create a positive environmental impact in every aspect. So, despite some negatives, the CHS community has remained committed to doing everything it can to help.
